Pico Pirates is an open world adventure game featuring deadly monsters, rival pirates and beautiful sandy beaches!
You set out on your quest to find The Pirate King and claim the crown for yourself. To do this, you'll need to find the 4 compass pieces scattered around the vast, procedurally generated world and keep your crews spirits high throughout (pirates lovely treasure and a good fight!).
Art, programming, design
Craig Tinney
Music
Chris Donnelly
@Gruber_music
Special thanks
Daniel Caaz for their excellent font compression solution (https://8bit-caaz.tumblr.com/post/171492623783/rendering-a-font-from-a-layered-sprite-sheet-in)
Josh Richter for the constant testing and excellent ideas
Alex Wall <3
Follow me on Twitter for more Pico 8 goodies @ctinney94
Previous versions
Thank you all for the kind words!
Oddly enough, cannons are the rarest of any item in the game, so it is a little unusual to be lacking in compass pieces whilst drowning in cannons...
Currently chest loot works off a weighted random function with no intelligent balancing so whilst it is less likely to be put in the position that @freds72 describes, it certainly doesn't make it impossible.
Lack of variety is my biggest downfall of this project (at least imo) and the result of how I went about development. I'll have a full postmortem on my site in the near future with my full thoughts for anyone interested.
Beautiful game! I haven't played all that much of it yet, but its already up there
You should correct the typo saying "Maybe I shouldn't of been a pirate..." (it's "shouldn't have"), but otherwise, this is an awesome game! I'd almost compare its technical impressiveness and scope to Kirby's Adventure on the NES.
This is the PICO-8's Kirby.
I defeated the Pirate King right after getting killed...did I win?
I finally beat this one. Called myself 4 cannon Jones by the end. On account of I had 4 cannons.
I will say, the most annoying thing is the inertia and wind. Felt like most of the game I was just floudnering and being pushed around. But when I finally got a little control my strategy was to go diagonally, cutting corners so that I didn't hit the middle and accidentally run into a kraken, which also avoided most hostiles this way. Then I check the map frequently to find islands. Once I had 3 cannons encounters we no longer an issue. From then it was just "Yo ho ho" to the end.
This is so great! It would be awesome to have land combat against other pirates or wild animals. Nonetheless, I give this game 5 out of 5 stars for challenge, fun, and a relaxing energy.
Edit: One suggestion. After you find 3 or more cannons, you're basically invincible and win fights instantly. Could enemies get harder as this happens to bring more of a challenge?
I loved it!
Beat with 2 cannons on seed 24.
Pretty challenging at times, but once I finally got to the King, I held up.
My favorite mechanic is that you have the bird's eye ocean, but also some upright fights.
.jpeg)
"VICTORY ACHIEVED", there is nothing more rewarding than seeing that on your screen.
[Please log in to post a comment]
